Beauty and the Beast?

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says the United Nations hasn't gone far enough in reforming its Human Rights Council. So he argues the U.S. should refuse to participate in it or support it.

Frist introduced a Senate resolution arguing that, "The new council will not prevent serial human rights abusers from gaining membership and cannot be relied upon to monitor human rights abuses."

Unless the U.N. reconsiders, he said, the U.S. and its allies should set up a separate human rights watchdog outside the U.N. system.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan also had some complaints Friday but not about that. He says the U.N. is being buried in paper, including 44,000 pages of documents from the Human Rights office last year alone.

In his own 44-page report, Annan called on member nations to stop demanding so many documents and reports.

Power Couple?

Actress and sex symbol Bo Derek accompanied new White House chief of staff Josh Bolten to this week's Radio and TV Correspondents' Dinner. The two are longtime friends.

But when Bolten worked on the 2000 presidential campaign, then-Texas Gov. George Bush couldn't quite believe that his hardworking policy director had actually received a "Happy Birthday" call from the Hollywood beauty.

So Mr. Bush took Bolten's cell phone and redialed the number that had just called. And sure enough, The Washington Post reports, the person who answered was indeed Ms. Derek, the star of the movie "10."

Mr. Bush, who is something of a kidder, teased Bolten by telling Derek, "Bo, let me just say that you and Josh together are a perfect 15."

No Court Consensus

The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a bill that would require the Supreme Court to allow cameras in the courtroom — unless a majority of justices vote against it.

While Chief Justice John Roberts told the committee last year that he'd be open to allowing cameras in the courtroom, Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer have long opposed the idea.

In 1996, Justice David Souter said "The day you see a camera come into our courtroom it's going to roll over my dead body."

But Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said the court's role in deciding policy makes it a "super-legislature," adding "the public has a right to know, and see, what the Supreme Court is doing."